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Some people don’t believe in putting on a professional work face at work. They say it hides who they really are as a person and they want to be free to ‘express’ themselves. What a load of baloney! Sad to say that people like that only want an excuse to behave in a lose manner and they don’t really want to take responsibility for their actions as they put it down to ‘free expression’. While I am all for a person being themselves and saying it how it is but, I don’t believe it gives anyone the license to say whatever they wish, to whomever they wish and certainly not whenever they wish. Especially when those ‘expressions’ are about the stupid things they have done in the past. As a manager, if you have any staff members like this, you might be doing them a great favor by pointing a few home truths out to them.
For example. How many times as a manager have you heard one of your staff members bragging about how they have found a loophole in the system which they are exploiting and getting away with? No doubt, quite a lot of times. Or, how many times have you heard a staff member bragging about some other illegal or perhaps dubious practice he is or has been involved with? Or worse yet, have you as a manager bragged to your staff about something illegal or dubious that you have been involved in over the years? If you have, then it might be a good idea to put a lid on it. We all have our dark personal and professional moments. I know I have but the last thing I would ever do is brag about them to work colleagues. The simple reason being is that not all share the view of what’s done is done and someone you have told might deem it necessary to tell someone higher for the ‘greater good’ of the company. Be careful what you tell others about your past deeds no matter how long ago it was and certainly if you hear anyone else in your staff doing it, tell them the same.
Putting on a professional work face requires a bit of discretion on your part. If you are in a job for example that you simply hate or are sick of, for gods sake keep it to yourself. I learned this the hard way a long time ago. I mentioned to someone I thought I could trust that I was tired of the way the company was treating its employees and that I was thinking of looking elsewhere. The next thing I know I was apparently fired. I was told by someone lower than me. So I marched over to my bosses office and waited outside his office for a few hours until he saw me. I finally got it out of him who it was that told him what I said and the version he got was so exaggerated it resembled nothing of what was originally said. The person I trusted with my views turned out to be a real brown noser but he brown nosed himself right out of a job. The lesson I learned was to keep my feelings of dissatisfaction to myself and instead of bitching about it, try and do something to change things that I’m not happy with.
Your professional work face can be your best friend at work. It’s not hard to do. You just need to be quiet about the sides of you that only your family, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife or drinking buddies should know about.
Having a professional work face simply means keeping your personal and work secrets to your self. It also means having the proper demeanor at work which befits your particular profession. For example, you wouldn’t be all smiles and jokes if you worked at a funeral parlor greeting mourners arriving for a funeral. Basically, having a professional work face takes a bit of constructing on your part which takes a lot of care and thought. The person you present at work should be the type of person that can succeed in business and that your superiors will want to get to know better.
It goes without saying that the work face you ‘construct’ has to be real and not an avatar version of yourself. It should be made up of a few parts like what you wear, the way you conduct yourself around the office and in meetings, the way you interact with others, the way you use the office email and most importantly, the way you socialize with your colleagues after work and on office social events. I have worked for many companies over the years and they all had office social events and I can tell you, the way some conducted themselves at these events was nothing short of embarrassing for me, for themselves and the company they represented. At these events, or even when you are just out for a drink with workmates after work, you should have your professional work face on because you never know who’s watching or what can get back to your superiors about you and your conduct.
The bottom line is that you have to be careful as to what personal revelations you make about yourself to your colleagues and superiors. While telling the truth in business is desirable, telling the truth about yourself and the things you have done in the past, proud achievements or not, should be kept to yourself as much as possible. I have known some guys who called having sex with every girl in the office as an achievement and it probably is but, I dare say that their superiors and a lot of their colleagues wont think so, especially the female ones. This will only make others see you as a womanizer, cheap and easy or simply just a liar. Before you start even thinking about announcing to the whole office your conquest of the girl or guy at the club the night before, think again. Unless you have a super hot body, when you start telling stories like that about yourself, it actually conjures up images of you naked to the people listening to you. In most cases, that is not a good thing and you really aren’t doing yourself any big favors at all. This equally applies to females as well as males.
The whole plan should be to win peoples esteem in a way that doesn’t compromise who you really are as a person. The way I used to look at it was that this is me at work and this is me at home. Same person but different demeanor depending on the situation. I’m not advocating for a minute to be someone who you are not but there are certain things that you wouldn’t do or say around certain people especially in the business world. For example, if you swear a lot at home, leave that at the door before you walk into your office as foul language generally isn’t tolerated well in business circles. Nobody wants to promote a foul mouthed loose cannon do they?
Believe it or not but another powerful tool that you can use in self development is using your athleticism. Not all of us are sporting minded and not all of us have a great physique that we can show off. But if you do, then why not use it to your advantage at work? I don’t mean walking around topless showing off your great abs or pecs. Most people don’t realize but competitive sports are the single most impressive extra you can put in your CV according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. “We naturally associate physical prowess with success and a sharp mind,” says behavioral psychologist Richard Reid. If you happen to be socializing with your superiors, always try and mention your next sporting goal but only if it’s worth mentioning. Winning the pool championships at your local public bar, while a great achievement in itself, is hardly something your superiors would be impressed with.
